With this latest Super Bowl berth, Jeffrey Lurie shows he’s the most important Eagle of all time
Before Lurie, fans for the most part expected the worst year after year from the Eagles. That has all changed. A second Super Bowl title would only validate it further.
NEW ORLEANS — There are only so many days anymore that Jeffrey Lurie chooses to speak publicly, or feels that he must. Monday here, amid the chaotic absurdity of Super Bowl Opening Night, was one such day. He lowered himself onto a chair on the Superdome turf and let the questioners come to him.
Lurie is 73, and he has controlled the Eagles for 30 years. He is no longer a new, young NFL owner trying to establish his credibility and bona fides, trying to reassure the league and Philadelphia and everyone who cares about the Eagles that he knows what he is doing. This is the Eagles’ third Super Bowl appearance in eight years, their fourth during Lurie’s ownership tenure. When, in August 2003 — before the Eagles had even reached a Super Bowl under him, let alone won one — he said that word around the NFL was that the Eagles were the league’s “gold standard,” the comment gave off more than a whiff of insecurity, as if Lurie were fishing for credit for the franchise’s improvement.
He doesn’t have to bait his line anymore. Even then, the Eagles’ ascendancy was already apparent, obvious to those who cared to see it. Life within the leaky, rat-ridden confines of Veterans Stadium was behind them. The NovaCare Complex had opened in 2001. Lincoln Financial Field was about to host its first official NFL game. Joe Banner as team president, Andy Reid as head coach, a team that would reach the conference championship game five times during an excellent-yet-excruciating eight-year period: From that time to this one, from the day Bert Bell founded the franchise in 1933 to these final few hours before Super Bowl LIX, Lurie has established himself as the most influential figure in Eagles history.
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A victory Sunday over the Kansas City Chiefs would serve simply as an additional validation of what’s already true, of how far the franchise has come.
“It all happened much faster than I thought,” Lurie said. “I was always worried that we wouldn’t be able to attract free agents, that we wouldn’t be able to keep players we had, attract top coaches. I was always really worried about that when I arrived. And yet, we were able to be in a lot of championship games, a Super Bowl early on. Establishing that core culture was our way of trying to establish something that was sustainable even when the facilities were horrendous. At this point, we now have great facilities and the ability to attract almost whoever we want. It has just sort of maximized everything we had.”
Skepticism everywhere
Picture the Eagles’ three decades under Lurie as a pyramid. He is atop it. Hovering just below him are the three men most responsible for the franchise’s climb to a place among the league’s elite: Banner, Reid, and current player-personnel chief Howie Roseman.
Bespectacled and slight of build, Banner looked like an insurance adjuster. But as the point person for the Eagles’ facilities campaigns, as a pioneer within the NFL for his ability to manage and manipulate the salary cap, and his accent on analytics, he was a forward-thinker and a bulldog as a negotiator.
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“We were dealing with incredible skepticism, even within the building,” Banner said in a recent phone interview. “I had multiple unpleasant interactions. [Former head coach] Ray Rhodes accused me of not being serious about getting a new stadium and trying to string everybody along and create hope when I wasn’t actually ever going to do it. There was skepticism in the marketplace all the way from the mayor’s office to the governor’s and everything in between.”
The decision to hire Reid inspired a different, more insidious kind of criticism. Reid had never been a coordinator in the NFL, never risen to a position higher than quarterbacks coach, and the Eagles were accused of hiring him because doing so would be less expensive — even though, according to Banner, Reid’s first contract made him the highest-paid first-time head coach in league history.
“The perception,” Banner said, “was that all they care about is making money.”
It seemed a not-so-subtle play on the antisemitic trope that Jewish people — Lurie and Banner are Jewish — are nothing but greedy penny-pinchers.
“I try to stay away from that stuff,” Banner said. “But I can’t say it never crossed my mind.”
That Reid, over his 12 years with the Chiefs, has won three Super Bowls and crafted a career that puts him in the best-head-coach-of-all-time discussion does not diminish his lasting effect on the Eagles. They did not win a Super Bowl during his 14 seasons, of course, but the locker-room and organizational culture that is so often cited as one of their core strengths is a residue from Reid’s time with them.
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A photo that he has kept for years — Reid posing with his coaching tree, all the assistants who went on to become head coaches — is a testament to that truth.
“Andy really started it all,” Lurie said.
And Roseman, mentored by Banner and Reid during his rise through the franchise and the franchise’s rise within the league, has overcome that half-stereotype, half-taunt of not being a “football guy” to become arguably the best general manager in the NFL.
“When I came in in 2000, it was on its way up without me: Jeffrey hiring Coach Reid, Joe running the team, Tom Heckert,” Roseman said. “I don’t know what it’s like to work at a Fortune 500 company, but that’s what we had.”
A new way of looking at the Eagles
For those of a certain sensibility, perspective, or generation, piling so much praise on Lurie and the Eagles for their strides under him can feel … odd.
With a few exceptions — the championship seasons of 1948, ’49, and ’60; the middle portion of Dick Vermeil’s seven-year stretch as head coach; the ballyhooed but underwhelming Buddy Ryan era — the Eagles spent their pre-Lurie existence conditioning everyone to expect the worst from them.
Every high draft pick or major free-agent signing was laced with doubts. Every game or season that promised something special turned out to be a disaster: Kenny King dashing down the sideline in Super Bowl XV, fog settling over Soldier Field, Bryce Paup going low on Randall Cunningham.
The Vet, with its clammy, bare-bones ambience and terrible turf field, cultivated and was a reflection of the jaded, nasty disposition of the fans who filled it.
“Honestly, it reminded me of my fandom of the Jets,” said Roseman, who was born in Brooklyn and lived in Monmouth County, N.J., throughout his childhood. “It was the NFC version of the Jets. I don’t know if that’s too negative. I grew up not liking the Giants as a Jets fan. Easy. Now I don’t like the Giants while I’m working for the Eagles.
“It was a very easy transition in that way, and it was like, ‘Man, what an opportunity. What an opportunity for me to be part of an organization that wins its first Super Bowl.’ It took a long [expletive] time.”
Until that night in 2018 — until Eagles 41, Patriots 33 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis — it was natural to stay cynical through all that disappointment, and the Eagles have had their share of low moments and big mistakes under Lurie, to be sure: Ronde Barber, Ricky Manning Jr., Chip Kelly in 2015.
But as the media members, influencers, and minor celebrities turned the Superdome into a circus Monday night, with another Super Bowl just six days away, it was difficult to remember those harder days for the Eagles, and Lurie isn’t inclined to retrace the arc of his and the franchise’s journey, anyway. Too much to be done in the here and now. Too much yet at hand.
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“You know, I don’t spend much time on the past,” he said. “I’m obsessed, as you know. There are so many days at 2 in the morning when I’m thinking about what’s going to happen. What are we going to do in 2025 or 2026? ‘We’re getting a lot of compensatory picks in ’26. What are we going to do about ’27?’ It’s an obsession. It’s a love affair. It’s my life’s work. I just want it to be great at all times.
“So I never think back. It’s a nice thought to have this second, what you bring up, but when you’re in the middle of something you love, you almost don’t have a chance to think back.”